Holiday sales by the numbers

Shoppers around the country had barely given thanks for their blessings on Thanksgiving when they raced to line up at their nearest big box stores for holiday deals.

The National Retail Federation credits savvy advertising to luring customers away from the table and to the cash register. “From green beans to great deals, millions of Americans found time this Thanksgiving to make the most of retailers’ promotions and enjoy a special family holiday,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “To keep their customers excited about holiday shopping, retailers will continue to offer attractive promotions through December, and provide strong consumer value with low prices, enhanced mobile and online offerings, and unique product assortment.” 

And the numbers don’t lie. The National Retail Federation says the numbers prove that those promotions paid off with more than 35 million Americans showing up to shop in store and online on Thanksgiving Day compared with 29 million last year.

Black Friday wasn’t so bleak after all. The Retail Federation tracked a record 247 million shoppers made purchases in person and with the click of a mouse over Black Friday weekend with total spending at an estimated $59.1 billion. According to Com Score, those mouse clicks went a long way. The internet technology company says Black Friday broke records for online sales, with $1.198 billion to make it “the season’s first billion dollar day and heaviest online spending to date.” IBM says online sales on Black Friday were up 18.9% from this time last year. 

Are you shopped out yet? Take a look at Real Money’s spending by the numbers below culled from various retail shopping reports. 

According to Adobe's Digital Index, on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday 28th and Friday 29th, shop­pers using a mobile device pre­ferred the iPad as their shop­ping com­pan­ion, spending nearly half a bil­lion dol­lars ($417 mil­lion) on these two days, fol­lowed by the iPhone and Android phones at $126 mil­lion and $106 mil­lion, respectively.

Cyber Mon­day was the largest online shop­ping day in the his­tory of the Inter­net, with an increase of 15% year-over-year with and sales of $2.27 billion. (Adobe Digital Index)

More than 35 million Americans visited retailers’ stores and websites on Thanksgiving Day. That’s up from 29 million last year. (National Retail Federation)

A record 247 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 226 million last year. (National Retail Federation)

Total spending reached over the Black Friday weekend: an estimated $59.1 billion. (National Retail Federation)

More than 131 million shoppers planned to go online for Cyber Monday, up from the 129 million who participated last year. (National Retail Federation)

Black Friday 2013 saw $1.198 billion in desktop sales making it the season’s first billion dollar day. (Comscore)

Shoppers spent an estimated total of $12.3 billion during Thanksgiving and Black Friday. That’s up 2.8% from last year with more than 1.07 billion stores (ShopperTrak)

Mobile traffic during Black Friday grew to 39.7% of all online traffic. That’s up 34% from last year. (not sure who to credit. (IBM Benchmark)